There’s room to negotiate

Question: I am living in a one-bedroom apartment in Reseda, but I want to move into a two-bedroom in the same area. I have lived here for 18 months. I originally signed a one-year lease; now I am on a month-to-month lease. What is the least amount of written notice I can give to move out? Most of the apartments I look at are ready to move into immediately, and I don’t know if the landlords will wait 30 days or more.

Answer: Although an owner generally won’t hold an apartment for 30 days without some compensation, everything in real estate is negotiable. In our current economy, things are more negotiable than usual.

You are only required to give the landlord a 30-day notice of your intent to vacate since your lease is up and you are now operating under a month-to-month agreement.

Finding a new apartment in the Reseda area should not be too difficult as vacancies have been rising, up from 3.1% in 2006 to 3.3% in 2007, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

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Building manager duties can vary

Question: What are the duties of an apartment manager?

Answer: The duties of resident managers in apartment buildings are not clearly spelled out in federal, state or local law. Rather, they are individually negotiated between owners and managers.

State law requires an owner to have an on-site resident manager for buildings with 16 or more rental units. Beyond that, pretty much everything can be decided on an individual basis. Managers can do as little as merely collecting rents for owners or as much as fielding renter complaints, dealing with vendors and workmen and doing major maintenance, depending on their agreements with owners.

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Kevin Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of the Apartment Assn. of Greater Los Angeles, an apartment owners’ service group. E-mail questions about apartment living to aptlifeaagla@aol.com.